ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEWMICHAEL HARRISON
November 18, 1993Fair Oaks, California
‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚
STATUS OF INTERVIEW:OPEN FOR RESEARCH
‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚
Interview Conducted by:
Brit Allan StoreySenior Historian
Bureau of Reclamation
‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚ ‚
Oral History ProgramBureau of Reclamation
Harrison, Mike, "Mike Harrison, Interview." Transcript of tape-recordedBureau of Reclamation Oral History Interview conducted by Brit AllanStorey, Senior Historian of the Bureau of Reclamation, November 18,1993, at the home of Mr. Harrison at 7440 Alexander Court, Fair Oaks,California. Transcribed by Jardee Transcription, Tucson, Arizona. Editedby Brit Allan Storey. Repository for the interview transcript used is theNational Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland.
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Michael Harrison
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i
STATEMENT OF DONATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
JOINS THE ARMY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
MOVES TO NATIONAL PARK SERVICE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
MOVES TO BUREAU OF RECLAMATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM GUIDELINES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
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iii
Michael Harrison
STATEMENT OF DONATION
iv
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1
Michael Harrison
ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW:MICHAEL HARRISON
This is Brit Allan Storey, Senior Historian of the Bureau ofReclamation, interviewing Michael Harrison in his home inFair Oaks, California, a suburb of Sacramento, on November18, 1993, at about 10:30 in the morning. This is tape one.
Storey: Well Mike, what I'd like to ask you to start off
with is, where you were born, and raised, and
educated, and how you eventually ended up at the
Bureau of Reclamation.
Harrison: Well, I was born December 13, 1897, in Paterson,
New Jersey. Paterson was an historic town, it was
founded by Alexander Hamilton. It was the home
of the anarchists who shot either McKinley or
Cleveland, I've forgotten which. It was also the
home of the Paterson colt. And of course Albert
[Allen] Ginsberg, the far out poet. And maybe a
claim to fame for Paterson, New Jersey, was the
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fact that I was born there (laughter). Whether that
means a damn thing or not I don't know.
But I went through the grade school and Paterson
High School and for a short time worked for the Erie
Railroad in New York City in the demurrage department
and left it for a higher paying job with the Public Service
Corporation of New Jersey as secretary to the district
manager.
JOINS THE ARMY
The war came along and when I reached the age of 21
I went into the Army and was in the Army until 1922, as
I intended to become a professional soldier. However,
Congress had other ideas, they cut the appropriation for
the Army, which meant that many of the men in my grade
were advised that as of June 30, 1922, they would be
separated from the Service.
MOVES TO NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
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Michael Harrison
Upon hearing that news, three of us who were then
stationed at Third Corps Area Headquarters in Baltimore,
Maryland, took the examination for the National Park
Service and the three of us passed. I had my choice of
going to Arizona or to Yosemite and chose the Grand
Canyon and Arizona because to me that was still frontier.
I reported for duty in Washington in order that I could
enter the Service there and the Government would then
pay my transportation (laughter) to Arizona -- which was
done. I was at the Grand Canyon for a period of almost
10 years when I left it and when into the Indian Service
and was stationed in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from 1932
until 1934. In August of 1934, I received an Air Mail
Special Delivery letter from the Commissioner of Indian
Affairs, John Collier, transferring me to California as
Assistant to Roy Nash who was the Regional
Coordinator. I stayed with Roy Nash until 1935 when he
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assumed the superintendency of the Sacramento Indian
Agency. I went with him as his field aide and was in the
Indian Service until 1947 when again Congress came
along and said you haven't got a job because "you don't
got no money!" At that time, the Shasta Dam had been
built and because of the building of the Shasta Dam the
Secretary of the Interior was permitted to take Indian
allotments that would be covered by the waters of the
dam — impounded behind the dam. And for which the
Indian owners were to be reimbursed. My counter
number in the Bureau of Reclamation at that time was
John Smithwick and every week I would call John and
ask him when I was going to get the money for my
Indians and this went on for quite some time. And at the
time we received information that because of a cut in
Indian Bureau appropriations, every civil service
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Michael Harrison
employee in the Bureau was notified that their job was
over as of June 30 of 1947.
MOVES TO BUREAU OF RECLAMATION
But my negotiations with John Smithwick had been
going on for several months and late in June of 1947
when I called John to enquire about getting payment for
the allotments that had been taken, he informed me that
the vouchers were being prepared and the checks would
be received within a few days. At that time, off the cuff,
I said to John, do you need a right-of-way agent? And
John said "yes I do," and I replied "I mean a damn good
right-of-way agent." And John's reply was "I hope to hell
you're serious because I am!" And I said to John "hang
onto your hat, I'm coming over to see you." I went over
to John's office and we talked and then he took me and
introduced me to Joe Leach who was the Chief Land
Officer of the Bureau in this region. And we talked and
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1. Interviewee notes this was a two-grade promotion.
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Leach asked me about my background and I told him, and
then he asked if I was afraid of working overtime. And I
told him that if I went with the Bureau of Reclamation, I
was taking with me over 4,000 hours of overtime.
Between 1941 and 1946, the [war] year period, I did not
take one single day leave of absence for sick leave or
annual leave. In addition to that, an Indian agent's job in
the field required all sorts of hours because our (laughter)
Indian people weren't much concerned with time. After
talking with Joe Leach he turned to John and he said,
"Well, if you want him, take him down to personnel." He
took me down, I was introduced to Osburn who was the
head of personnel, we talked for awhile, and I signed up
the papers to go to work for the Bureau at a three1-grade
promotion in pay. So that leaving the Indian Service and
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Michael Harrison
going to the Bureau of Reclamation financially was the
best thing I'd ever done in my life.
This all happened on a Wednesday, and the next
morning I reported to the Bureau of Reclamation to study
their methods and read some of the appraisal reports and
the Bureau's method of acquiring property when one of
the clerks in the Land Office came to me and told me that
there was a telephone call for me from Portland. Portland
was the Regional Office for the Indian Bureau, and this
was a call from the Assistant Regional Director Charley
Graves saying that he was coming down to see me on
Sunday. I would like to say that when I signed up with
the Bureau of Reclamation, I wrote a three-page letter to
Walter Woehlke who was a friend of mine and the
Associate Commissioner of Indian Affairs telling him
exactly how I felt about the Indian Bureau and the manner
in which they had handled the letters that went out to
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Civil Service employees saying that they were going to be
separated from the Service as of June 30. And I told him
then that I was going to work for the Bureau of
Reclamation at a three[two]-grade promotion in pay. The
following Sunday, Charley Graves and the then head of
the personnel department from the Chicago office of the
Indian Bureau came to Sacramento where I was living
then and tried to convince me that I ought to go back to
the Indian Bureau because I was to be placed in charge of
land for the entire State of California that was
administered by the Indian Bureau. And I turned them
down. So I went to work for the Bureau of Reclamation
as a right-of-way agent and stayed with it until I retired in
May 1960.
Storey: So you were with Reclamation, then, 13 years?
Harrison: Thirteen years. I would've stayed longer with
Reclamation — I didn't want to retire until I was
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Michael Harrison
65, but my wife pointed out to me that I was
working for $6 a month which would've been the
difference between my annual pay and take home
pay in my annuity. So I decided to retire, I wasn't
a $6-a-month worker.
Storey: Let's go back if we may to what you were doing
with the predecessor of the Bureau of Indian
Affairs.
Harrison: The Park Service?
Storey: No, with BIA. The Indian . . .
Harrison: Oh. I was the field aide to the superin[tendant]. .
. first as the Assistant to the Regional
Coordinator, Roy Nash, who later became
superintendent of the Sacramento Indian Agency.
And I was his field aide, as a field aide I guess I
had to be a jack of all trades. In the first place, I
was his representative in the field. In the second
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place, I had charge of land within the Bureau of
Indian Affairs in our agency which extended from
Kern County in the south to the Oregon line in the
north, excluding Mono and Alpine Counties on
the east side of the Sierra. And the four counties
in the northwest corner, which meant that I
traveled not only all over the State of California
but even into Oregon and into Nevada in my
duties as Head of the Land Division.
Storey: And what were you doing as Head of the Land
Division?
Harrison: Well, I had to supervise the leasing of lands. I
also was head of the probate, I had to probate
estates and so on; take care of heirship problems.
Storey: Uh huh, so when a tribe or an individual wanted
to lease their property for some reason . . .
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Michael Harrison
Harrison: I had to lease it. I was the leasing officer, because
all of this land was held in trust.
Storey: Okay. So BIA was considered the owner?
(Harrison: Oh yeah. The Government was . . .)
Or the trustee?
Harrison: The trustee, yes. Not alone that, but as a field
aide I had to attend all of the council meetings of
the various groups that were organized under the
provisions of the Wheeler-Howard Act, which
was known as the Indian Reorganization Act.
And it was those duties, and settling family
affairs, and things of that sort, and traveling
around to all of the reservations and rancherias —
of which there were 125 in our jurisdiction. Kept
me busy.
Storey: There were 125 groups?
Harrison: Yes.
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Storey: Now which was the group that was affected by
Shasta?
Harrison: There were no tribes as such that were affected by
Shasta. There were individual allottees that were
affected by Shasta.
Storey: And how many were there?
Harrison: I don't recall offhand how many there were. We
had over 1,500 allotments on the Public Domain
and those were Public Domain allotments.
Storey: Could you explain what that means?
Harrison: Well a Public Domain allotment was an allotment
that was made to an Indian, anywhere from 80 to
160 acres that were held in trust for him by the
United States Government.
Storey: Out of the public lands?
Harrison: Out of the public lands, (Storey: But not within
the reservation) but not within the reservation.
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Michael Harrison
Storey: How did they go about obtaining rights to an
allotment like that outside a reservation?
Harrison: They applied for them.
Storey: Okay, then why were they entitled to receive an
allotment like that?
Harrison: Because they were an Indian.
Storey: So each Indian in each tribe . . .
Harrison: . . . If he wanted to. But these were unallotted
Indians who were not allotted on reservations.
Storey: Okay, so they had to be Indian. Did it matter
which tribe?
Harrison: No.
Storey: They had — and the reservation lands were used
up, am I hearing this correctly?
Harrison: Well, many of these Indians didn't live on
reservation lands.
Storey: Uh huh. But they had to be a tribal member?
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Harrison: They had to be an Indian, yes.
Storey: Well, there are a lot of people who claim to be
Indians who aren't tribal members.
Harrison: Well they could be enrolled on the tribe but not
living on a reservation.
Storey: Okay, and they were entitled to a certain amount
of land by because of the fact that they were an
enrollee?
Harrison: That's right.
Storey: And so if there wasn't land on the reservation they
could request land elsewhere?
Harrison: Yes.
Storey: Okay, up to what . . .
Harrison: . . . They may never have lived on the reservation.
But yet they were enrolled with a tribe and then
were entitled if they wished to take up an
allotment on Public Domain.
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Michael Harrison
Storey: When would these allotments have taken place?
Harrison: Oh, way back when . . . many, many years.
Storey: So these are things that they had inherited maybe?
Or were they the original allottee, do you happen
to know?
Harrison: In many cases, it was inherited.
Storey: Okay, and you don't have any idea how many
were involved at Shasta?
Harrison: No, I don't recall at this time.
Storey: But there were more than just a couple, I take it.
Harrison: Oh, there were more — you betcha there were
more than a couple.
Storey: Maybe more than 10 or 15?
Harrison: More than 10 or 15. Maybe 25 or 30. (Storey:
Okay.) At least.
Storey: And part of BIA's trust responsibility was to make
sure . . .
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Harrison: . . . Was to see that they got their money.
Storey: . . . Fair payment for the . . .
Harrison: . . . After appraisal by Bureau of Reclamation
appraisers.
Storey: Uh huh. Did you ever have to argue with the
Bureau of Reclamation about what a fair price
was?
Harrison: No.
Storey: Were the Indians coming in and talking to you
about this issue a lot?
Harrison: Oh, when I'd be out in the field, "when am I
gonna get my money?" So when I'd get back to
the office from the field, I'd call John Smithwick
and say, "when am I gonna get my money"?
Storey: Uh huh. How do you spell John's last name, do
you know?
Harrison: S-M-I-T-H-W-I-C-K.
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Michael Harrison
Storey: Smithwick, okay. Now do you happen to
remember any of the individual Indians who were
involved?
Harrison: No, I do not. I do not. But I know they all got
paid eventually.
Storey: Were there any arguments about the value of the
property that you remember?
Harrison: None that ever came to my attention.
Storey: Okay. That's interesting. And this was land
behind Shasta that was going to be flooded?
Harrison: Yes.
Storey: You mentioned in your discussion that you were
an Indian agent.
Harrison: Well that's what we — those who worked in the
field were called. The Indians called us agents.
Storey: Oh, I see.
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Harrison: Not like the old Indian agent that you read about
back in the '80's and '90's. As a matter of fact,
when I was living in Ukiah in Mendocino County,
there was an old Pomo Indian by the name of
Calpella Pete and he always called me "Agent
Boy."
Storey: Agent Boy.
Harrison: Agent Boy.
Storey: B-O-Y. (Harrison: B-O-Y.) Did you keep an
inventory of the lands for which you were
responsible?
Harrison: Oh yes.
Storey: That must have been a fairly complicated process.
Harrison: It was, especially when you found heirs to an 80-
acre allotment on the Public Domain that was
leased for 10 cents an acre because it was up in
the lava beds and you couldn't raise anything on
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2. This was corrected from middle East to middle West bythe interviewee.
Michael Harrison
it with a barrel of whiskey and a six-shooter.
Leased for 10 cents an acre, and there were so
many heirs to that 80 acres that each heir from the
lease money was entitled to less than one penny.
Storey: That's a lot of heirs, yeah!
Harrison: And those were what we known as the
"Winnebago allotments" that were made for
Winnebago Indians back in the Middle West2 who
couldn't be allotted back there, so allotments were
given to them in northern California. And we had
to administer them.
Storey: So allotments were not — they didn't get to pick
the public land they wanted?
Harrison: No, (laughter) of course not.
Storey: Who decided that?
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Harrison: Don't ask me, I wasn't in the Indian Bureau then
(laughter). That was done many, many, many
years ago. But we got rid of them, we got
authority from the Commissioner of Indian
Affairs to sell them at public auction.
Storey: And then what did — you distributed the money
to the allottees as it were?
Harrison: Yeah (laughing).
Storey: So I gather this became fairly complicated in
terms of keeping track of who owned what.
Harrison: Not alone that, but it cost more to administer them
than they were worth. That's why we got
permission to sell them.
Storey: What other kinds of activities did you do as the
Manager of Lands for the [Sacramento] Indian
agency?
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Michael Harrison
Harrison: Well I told you, attending all these council
meetings that'll begin late at night and last till the
early hours of the morning. And as Roy Nash
used to say, "we took care of them from the womb
to the tomb."
Storey: Well, when you went over to Reclamation did that
give . . .
Harrison: . . . That was a vacation!
Storey: (laughter) Did that give you a different
perspective on what BIA was trying to do?
Harrison: No, my perspective hadn't changed.
Storey: Did you happen to have to deal with the Shasta
claims then?
Harrison: What do you mean, the Shasta claims?
Storey: Well, the payment on the Shasta properties.
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Harrison: No, because after I — those payments were made
almost immediately after I'd left the Service and
went to Reclamation.
Storey: Were you flattered that BIA wanted you to come
back and take over all of the lands of California?
Harrison: You bet I was. And as a matter of fact, Mr.
Woehlke flew out from Chicago for that meeting
on Sunday, and then, of course, it came to me as
to why Graves had called from Portland because
as soon, I'm sure, as soon as Walter Woehlke got
my letter, he called Graves in Portland and
probably said "Get down there and see if you can
get him to change his mind." And the giveaway
of the whole thing was when Graves and the man
from personnel and Walter Woehlke showed up in
my house he asked Graves, "Did you get him
(meaning me) to change his mind. And Graves
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Michael Harrison
said, "No I didn't, I couldn't," and Walter said
"well did you offer him as much as the Bureau is
going to pay him." And Graves gave the whole
thing away, he says, "you didn't authorize me to."
But I'd made up my mind that twice I got fired:
once from the Army, and once from the Indian
Bureau, and I wasn't going to put up with it again.
Storey: How long had you been in Lands with the Indian
Bureau?
Harrison: From 1935 until '47.
Storey: So you had 12 years of experience with land
(Harrison: With land. Yeah, yeah.) issues . . .
keeping track of inventories, sales, leases . . .
Harrison: . . . In other words, I had a plat book, that I had
made up myself and I wish I had taken it with me,
but I left, of every allotment on the Public
Domain in our jurisdiction together with the
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heirships, the ownership's standing, the name of
every heir to every one of those pieces of land so
that I could tell at a moment's glance where that
land was and who the owners were. And their
degree of ownership — the interest that they had
in that property.
Storey: Was all of this complicated by the fact that
different tribes had different customs about
property rights and so on?
Harrison: No, what their customs were weren't considered.
It's what our regulations said the custom had to
be.
Storey: In terms of inheritance and that sort of thing.
Harrison: Yeah. Yes.
Storey: Okay, well then you went over to Reclamation in
'47.
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Michael Harrison
Harrison: And that was an entirely different new
experience; because here I had to negotiate for
land.
Storey: In order to purchase it? (Harrison: Yeah.) Or
obtain rights-of-way or . . .?
Harrison: Rights-of-way, either outright purchase, or
easements, or . . .
Storey: How many other folks did you work with in that
office?
Harrison: Well of course there was clerical staff. Joe Leach
was the head of the Land Department, he had
Smithwick, Mary Mulcahey, Jim Stewart, and
Goodwin, his assistants, and then there were
appraisers and right-of-way agents. There was a
fairly large staff, I'd say 20 people.
Storey: And you were one of the right-of-way agents . . .
Harrison: . . . I was one of the right-of-way agents.
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Bureau of Reclamation Oral History Program
Storey: So what's the difference between a right-of-way
agent and an appraiser?
Harrison: The appraiser went out and appraised the
property, after which he prepared an appraisal
report together with photographs. Then those
appraisal reports were turned over to the right-of-
way agents to study and who then had to contact
the land owners and to negotiate for either
outright purchase or grant easements or whatever
. . . the rights could be acquired by the Bureau of
Reclamation and the Central Valley Project.
Storey: Did you for instance, say you had an appraisal,
did you always offer the appraised value?
Harrison: Always. When we appeared at the owner's place
of business or residence to acquire property that
he owned, I had in my hand a deed in which the
appraised amount was set forth. There was no
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Michael Harrison
negotiating, in other words if the appraisal was
$10,000, I didn't offer him $7,500. And let me
tell you, that was the difference between the way
we handled the land owners and the way the State
of California handled land owners because with
the State of California, at least in the Highway
Department, and of that I have personal
knowledge, there was a lot of bad feeling for the
simple reason that the State's negotiators, right-of-
way agents, for a $10,000 piece of property would
offer Mr. Smith $7,500.
Storey: Mm-hmm. This is a hypothetical Mr. Smith.
Harrison: Yeah, and for the same type of property, living
down the road a half mile was Mr. Brown, whose
appraisal was $10,000. And Mr. Brown was a
tough guy, and he refused to accept $7,500, so the
final negotiation we'll say was $9,000. And then
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Mr. Brown and Mr. Smith compared notes. And
what do you think that did?
Storey: A lot of bad feelings, I imagine.
Harrison: We didn't do it that way, we offered Mr. Smith the
appraised amount that was in that appraisal report.
Now, it was up to the right-of-way agent . . .
END OF SIDE 1, TAPE 1.BEGINNING SIDE 2, TAPE 1.
Harrison: So the points upon which the appraiser based his
figure were covered. For instance, I went out on
a piece of property where the appraisal report said
that there were four wells. I found a well that was
covered with weeds, the appraiser didn't know
anything about it. There was a cover over the
well and weeds had grown up all around it. When
I came back to the office after talking with the
owner and he thought that the appraisal wasn't
high enough because there were five wells on the
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Michael Harrison
property and I knew damn well that the appraisal
report said four, I said well let's go — I'd like to
count those wells. And he took me out in the field
and we walked around and one time we stopped
there, we were talking. I said, "Where's the fifth
well"? He says, "You're standing on it." Well I
came back to the office, pointed [this] out to the
appraiser, he changed his appraisal, I took the
papers back, and they were signed.
I had exactly the same thing happen in another
instance where the appraisal had been made in the winter,
in rolling country, and it had rained — this is the rainy
season in California, and there were water all over the
place in all these hollows. And when I called on the
owner of the land, he pointed out that the property that he
would sell to the Government had the only spring in that
area that — where you had water all year round. Well
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Bureau of Reclamation Oral History Program
when I found that out I went back to the appraiser and I
said, "Did you know that there was a spring on that
property"? He says "No, there was water all over the
place." Well that appraisal was changed and I had no
trouble getting the property, so that was one of the duties
of an appraiser.
Then of course you had to be very careful with whom
you worked, you'd be working out say in an irrigation
district where you were getting grant easements for the
laterals and you'd get to know the people because you
called on them quite frequently and you'd have one man
say, "Have you called on so and so yet?" "No." "Oh, he's
tough." I usually found out that the ones that were tough
were easy to get along with, the ones that they said "Oh
you'll have no trouble with him," they were tough.
But I enjoyed the work, as a matter of fact, here is one
of my efficiency reports, "Right of away, agent Harrison
31
Michael Harrison
is always willing to do any job large or small that is
assigned to him and he goes about it without required
supervision. Very tactful in dealing with recalcitrant land
owners." They always gave me the tough ones, and I've
had some tough ones!
I had one tough one — his land had been condemned
and he had received a letter from the Department of
Justice saying that he could draw down 80 percent of the
appraised value of the property because the appraised
value — the money had been deposited in the registry of
the court . . . Condemnation and he never applied for it.
And they couldn't get him to reply, so they called on the
Regional Office to send somebody up to talk to this man
— he was up in Shasta County. It had to do with the
canal, nothing to do with the dam, and so I was sent up to
see this gentleman. Drove up to the ranch house, and he
wasn't home. And I had introduced myself to his wife, of
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course, and told her why I was there and while we were
talking she looked down the road she says, "Well he's just
driven up to the mail box." So I excused myself and got
in my car and drove down and parked right behind him.
He was facing this way, and I parked right behind him.
Now he heard me drive up there, I got out of the car and
I walked over to him and he was sitting there looking at
this mail — never looked at me just looking at his mail,
and I introduced myself to him and he just grunted, and
for some reason or another I had a hunch. He started to
put his mail down and as he did, I got in my car and
moved forward and he backed right up, if I hadn't moved
he'd have run into me. So I let him go back to the house,
I drove into the district office and Alexander was in
charge of the survey part — it was a survey office, he was
the engineer in charge of the survey crew. And I told
him, "I've just had a very unpleasant experience." And he
33
Michael Harrison
and the whole crew started laughing, and I said "What the
hell are you laughing at"? And he said — and he
mentioned the man's name and I said yes and I said "What
happened?" And then he told me and I understood why
this man was hostile, and I didn't blame him one damn bit.
I would've been also. He came back from town and saw
a surveying crew on his property. He climbed the fence,
and went over to the chief of the party and asked him
what they were doing there and was told in so many
words it was none of his damn business, they were doing
United States Government work. So he made it his
business. He went back to the pickup truck and came
back with a pipe wrench and ran them off. That's why he
didn't want to have anything to do with the Government.
Well I left — stayed away for about a week, then I went
back. And this time he was at home, and he invited me
into his little cubby hole of his office, we sat down. We
34
3. Addition by interviewee.
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started talking, and I talked about everything, about,
except the land. And then I finally got around, "Did you
get a letter from the Department of Justice"? "Yeah."
"What did you do with it"? So he reached in his desk and
pulled out the letter and there written in bold pencil, you
may have to bleep this, he had written "shove it up your
ass." Well, before we left I told him I would get him his
check and I did. And I took it up to him. [We parted
friends.]3
I had another case up in Shasta County, and this had
to do with the dam, and that was from a man who
operated gravel pits and things of that sort. I got him to
sign whatever papers they were — I've forgotten now and
he told me to take them back to Sacramento and he said,
"you tell the people down there to frame it because that's
35
Michael Harrison
the first time I ever signed anything for the Government."
I (laughter) had some good ones.
Storey: How did you get the previous man to start talking
to you?
Harrison: Mr. So-and-So?
Storey: Yeah.
Harrison: I don't know, I just talked to him. I'll tell you
something else. As a right-of-way agent, I never
wore a white shirt and a tie and a jacket. I went
out in the field just as they were dressed. See, in
other words, I wasn't a "city slicker." I never
threatened them. I didn't have to; because I knew
if they didn't negotiate, there was always
Condemnation, and I never threatened them with
Condemnation. They would say to me "what's
going to happen if I don't sign it"? And then it
was never a threat, I didn't say "we're going to
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condemn you," I would explain the process and
what HE had to do and what his rights were, and
so on, and what WE would have to do and how
the whole thing would work. I got along — I
never had any trouble with any of them, with any
of the people with whom I worked.
Storey: You never had somebody who said "no, my
property's worth more than this, I know it's worth
more than this."
Harrison: Oh yes, then I'd try to find out why. See I would
get them talking, "well why do you think it's" . . .
course they never saw the appraisal report, I
would never show them the appraisal report, "but
why do you think it's worth more?" And our
appraisals were fair. I remember the Berryessa
Valley where we built the Berryessa Dam, I
bought most of the land for that project. There
37
Michael Harrison
was one rancher that, oh, he just raised hell to the
point where the San Francisco Examiner had a
full page of his story. Family had been there for
generations and the Government was only going
to give them so much and (laughter) so on, and he
had to get his own appraiser. And his own
appraiser came in with a figure less than ours!
Well, he damn near broke his wrist signing
documents.
Storey: Now if I'm getting the picture correctly, you were
the person who contacted the land owners and
engaged in the negotiations for the purchase of the
property. The appraiser didn't do anything of that.
Did you have situations where they just, what
happened when you had to go to appraisal — I
mean to Condemnation?
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Harrison: We would turn it over to the Department of
Justice and they would file an order for immediate
take. In other words as soon as the court signed
that order, the property was ours. However, the
judge would always ask whether, if you got
immediate possession, would the land owner be
disaccommodated, would there be some hardship
or whatever. If it meant moving or things of that
sort, then there would be a stay, but if we
presented it to the court that no hardship would be
entailed, then we got an order for immediate
possession and as soon as he signed that order, it
was the Government's property.
Storey: But you still had to pay for it.
Harrison: Oh, yes.
Storey: So then, how was that payment determined?
39
4. Editor's note. Mr. Harrison misstated the date of this Act. It is commonly known as the Canal Act (26 Stat. 391; 43 U.S.C. § 945)of August 30, 1890. The relevant portion of the Act reads "In allpatents for lands hereafter taken up under any of the land laws of theUnited States or on entries or claims validated by this act, west of theone hundredth meridian, it shall be expressed that there is reserved fromthe lands in said patent described, a right of way thereon for ditches orcanals constructed by the authority of the Unites States."
In addition, after Mr. Harrison retired the Act wasamended in an Act of September 2, 1964, (78 Stat. 808) to provide forcompensation for canals and ditches begun after January 1, 1961.
Michael Harrison
Harrison: Then it would go to trial. It'd go to the court to be
tried before a jury, and then that jury could do one
of several things: it could determine that the
appraisal was fair, it could determine that the
appraisal was too low, and it could determine that
the appraisal was too high. So you had those
choices, but one of the most difficult things, I
think, was in explaining to the land owner was the
Act of 18894 as I recall that was retroactive to
1887. You've never heard of it I'll bet.
Storey: No, I haven't.
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Harrison: This provided for a right-of-way for canals or
ditches built by the United States without setting
forth the width of the right-of-way on any lands
filed on since 1877.
Storey: So any public lands, now you said '87 a moment
ago . . .
Harrison: I said the Act was 1889, retroactive to 1887, so
that any public lands filed on from 1887 on were
subject to a right-of-way by the United States
Government and that Act did not set forth the
width of that right-of-way, and for the Friant-Kern
Canal, we were taking 400-foot rights-of-way.
Storey: Then were you having to provide compensation?
Harrison: No!
Storey: That was the whole point of the Act, you got the
right-of-way without compensation.
41
Michael Harrison
Harrison: Not alone that, but the right-of-way department of
the Regional Office in Sacramento, that's the land
division. had a hell of a fight with the attorneys
who didn't want to pay for improvements that
were on that right-of-way because they were part
of the land. And our argument was, "God damn
it, from the standpoint of public relations, let's pay
'em for it." And we won.
Storey: So you did pay for improvements?
Harrison: For improvements.
Storey: Say the land had been leveled, for instance.
Would there be compensation because it had been
leveled, which is an expensive process?
Harrison: No.
Storey: Just if there were buildings, in other words, or
structures. Okay. And for instance did you ever
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relocate buildings or something like that for
people?
Harrison: No.
Storey: You just tore them down and compensated them
for the building.
Harrison: Yeah, buildings, or trees, or orchards, or vines,
whatever. (Interruption re security guard.) . . . It
required — now whether the law required or
whether it was our own regulations, it required
that the owner be notified in writing and, of
course, this is what you ran into, "I've got a policy
of title insurance (tapping on desk), it says all of
that property is mine." Well, I'd call on an owner
either with a letter or he'd already received it, or
it had been served by a United States Marshal, so
that he knew all about it. "Do you have your
policy of title insurance here"? "No, it's in the
43
Michael Harrison
safety deposit box." "Well, I would suggest that
you go to your bank and get your policy of title
insurance. Do you have an attorney? Well, take
it to your attorney and if that policy of title
insurance says 'as of such and certain date the
above described property is insured in the name of
______, subject to the Act of 1889.' Your
attorney will explain to you what the Act of 1889
is. Now if you don't have an attorney and your
policy of title insurance has that language, I'll tell
you what the Act of 1889 is" and I would explain
it to him. Now, I says, "if that 'subject to' is not
there and you don't have an attorney, I would
suggest that you get an attorney because you have
a suit against the title insurance company for not
picking up that cloud."
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Now, that's the way I talked to the people I called on
— I was their friend, I wasn't their antagonist. And they
would say, "Well if I go to Condemnation, what do I have
to do"? I said, "Well first you have to get an attorney."
I says, "then second either you or the attorney will have
to hire a licensed appraiser, not the man who sells real
estate on the corner but a man who is a professional
appraiser, and he will come out and appraise the property.
And then the Government and you and your attorney will
appear in court and present all of your information, and
all of the Government's information will be presented to
a jury. And THEY will decide whether this is a fair price
or not." But I said, "In the meantime, 80 per cent of what
we have appraised your property at you can draw down,
and it will not prejudice your case in any way and you
might just as well make use of that money as not, it's
45
Michael Harrison
yours. You're going to get it in any event." So I always
parted on good terms with these people.
Storey: What did you respond when they said "well why
can't I take a 100 percent"?
Harrison: Well, always 20 percent is sort of — maybe the
case will go against you and you've already drawn
down money you're not entitled to! I had an
answer.
Storey: Did you ever have that happen where the jury said
"no, it's worth less."
Harrison: I don't recall because I never attended any
condemnation cases. I was never called.
Storey: Oh, you never had to serve as a witness or
anything.
Harrison: No, no, and usually you are but I was never
called. These cases — I'd say that most of them
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if not all of them were settled before it even went
to trial.
Storey: Now what kind of authority did you have to
negotiate with the people? Did you have any
authority to say, raise the price?
Harrison: No, oh no, oh no, I had no authority to change the
conditions that were set forth in the deed. I could
discuss things with the owner, and if there were
certain things that he wanted or objected to I
would note it, come back to the office from my
field trip, and discuss it with my people, and they
would discuss it with the land people. And if they
thought there should be a change, the papers were
changed and I took them back.
Storey: But you were an intermediary in the negotiations
in other words.
Harrison: That's right. That's right.
47
Michael Harrison
Storey: And Reclamation could, for instance, say "well in
order to save trouble and time and everything,
we'll give them another couple thousand" or
something . . .
Harrison: Well let me, let me give you a case in point: it
was a very wealthy and very large land owner
down in Tulare County, and we were taking a lot
of land from him for the Friant-Kern Canal. Now
we were taking 400-foot rights-of-way and when
it came to severance damage which — another
factor that the appraisers always allowed in
making the appraisals, if a piece of land was
severed which meant that you had to go around
like this to get to this piece . . .
Storey: You couldn't go directly back and forth the way
you previously had been able to . . .
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Harrison: They'd made allowances for that in the appraisal,
raised the price. Well, this guy insisted on
bridges . . .
Storey: Over the canal to connect the property . . .
Harrison: And I forget, there were seven or eight bridges.
He had a lot of property and boy, that was fought
over and over and over again as to whether you
give them severance or whether you give them to
— and finally it was decided to build the bridges
and I think the bridges were to cost $8,000 apiece.
They were just bridges for farm equipment, and
after he had agreed to accept the bridges, then he
said he'll take the money — the cost of the
bridges. Now whether the cost of the bridges
amounted to the amount of severance I don't
remember — that was negotiated between the
49
Michael Harrison
attorneys, but he took the cash instead of the
bridges!
Storey: Interesting. Do you remember his name by
chance?
Harrison: Yes I do and I'm not going to repeat it!
Storey: You mean it isn't part of the records?
Harrison: Not part of — not as far as I'm concerned.
Storey: That's fine, it doesn't matter.
Harrison: Oh here's another one, of course you know to
paraphrase the Bible, "if thou dost not blow thine
own horn, Gabriel should not blow it for thee."
You've never heard that one.
Storey: No, not exactly.
Harrison: That's according to Harrison's version [of the]
King James [Bible]. All of the rating elements
marked satisfactory on the front of this form are
close to the excellent point, "this employee is a
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very hard and conscientious worker and his
general attitude and method of dealing with those
he interviews is a credit to the Government." I'm
proud of that.
Storey: Another performance appraisal, yeah.
Harrison: These are all good ones, they're all good.
Storey: Yeah, you only kept the good ones, is that the way
it worked?
Harrison: Yeah, I threw the bad ones away (both laughing);
I had some funny experiences, oh, a lot of nice
experiences. I remember when I was working on
the Trinity Project up in Trinity County. Now we
were buying land there for those parcels of land
that we acquired for the dam and the reservoir we
knew had mineral value (tapping on desk): gold!
We were not paying one penny for it. What do
you think about that?
51
Michael Harrison
Storey: Well, I'm going to ask you why we were doing it
that way.
Harrison: That is the question you're supposed to ask! At
that time, gold was valued at $35 an ounce and
our mining engineers that figured that it took $41
an ounce to take it out of the ground. And when
you have a situation like that, you don't got no
gold.
Storey: There's no appraised value.
Harrison: No appraised value. Well, there was one man up
there, whose name I have forgotten, so even if you
ask me his name I in all honesty couldn't give it to
you, thought our appraisal was too low. And I
had called on him several times and I just wasn't
getting to first base with him. I went back again,
this goes over a period of a number of weeks, see,
I'm spending most of the time in the field. I'm
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home every maybe every other weekend. So this
time I roll up to his house, and here is a County
car sitting in front of the place. So I walk over
and introduce myself and who am I talking to but
a man out of the County Assessor's office, and we
get to comparing notes and I find out that he is
there because this man (laughter) claims he has
appraised his property too high for tax purposes.
But the man's not home, so the two of us decide to
wait, and I guess we wait there about an hour or
more when the owner drives up and here he sees
a Government car with Federal plates, a County
car with County plates, a right-of-way agent from
the Bureau of Reclamation, . . .
Storey: . . . And a tax assessor.
Harrison: And a tax assessor. You know what the outcome
of that visit was, don't you?
53
Michael Harrison
Storey: Well, why don't you tell us just so it's on the
record?
Harrison: I had no trouble getting him to sign the papers!
Storey: That's interesting.
Harrison: We had another case down in Tulare County,
again where we were taking grant easements,
because we were putting in this system for the
Ivanhoe Irrigation District, which meant that there
were lateral lines. We were not paying for the
easement because the cost then would have been
added if we were paying — the cost of the
easements would've added to the cost of the
distribution system that the owners eventually
would have had to pay for.
Storey: Right.
Harrison: So we were taking grant easements which meant
that they could use the land over which the pipes
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were, but couldn't build any permanent structure
. . .
END OF SIDE 2, TAPE 1.BEGINNING OF SIDE 1, TAPE 2.
This is Brit Storey, interviewing Michael Harrison onNovember 18, 1993. This is tape two.
Storey: The pipes were underground so they couldn't
build on top of the pipeline that was carrying the
water.
Harrison Buildings and things of that sort.
Storey: And did you have to pay for those, too?
Harrison: No, no, they were grant easements.
Storey: And so a grant easement is — they give you an
easement and the benefit that they receive is
having the water transported.
Harrison: That's right.
Storey: So that they avoid the repayment obligation.
55
Michael Harrison
Harrison: That's right, now what we did pay for — if there
were, say, orange trees, citrus, and they grow
citrus and vines, grapes, in Tulare County if there
were trees and vines there, we would pay for the
trees and vines that we took. If there was a crop
that was set on the trees or vines, we would pay
for the crop, although it hadn't ripened, based on
"X number of years" packing house records. Do
you follow me?
Storey: Yeah. I think so.
Harrison: Well at this particular time when we working in
the Ivanhoe Irrigation District, many of the
ranchers were pulling their trees which are citrus,
or olives, and vines in order to put in a fast-
growing crop. Now the — this particular land
owner the line was to come down, we'll say, on
the east side of his property which faced the
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county road. So he was going to pull his vines
and trees to put in this fast-growing crop. Now he
had been given a plat by the engineers showing
what part of his property was to carry this grant
easement so he pulled everything except the vines
and trees that were within the easement, see. So
when we came along to put in the line, we would
reimburse him for the vines and the trees, plus a
crop if it was set. Well just before we got — a
couple of miles before we got to his property, the
engineers changed the alignment and moved to
the other side of the road which was on somebody
else's property. He came to us (laughter) and
wanted us to pay for the vines and trees he hadn't
pulled!
Storey: Mm-hmm, even though you didn't even ask for
the easement finally.
57
Michael Harrison
Harrison: He didn't get the easement, no, the easement
wasn't a . . . we said no, we had nothing to do with
that, that's yours! Then I had one other case — I
must've had an obstinate streak in me, because I
like this man very very much, he was a nice man
to deal with, but we had to get a grant easement
for him. And I had called on him, there was no
trouble in our relationship to each other, but he
said "Mr. Harrison" he says, "you're going to have
to condemn me, you're going to have to take this
to Condemnation because I'm not going to sign
that easement." I said "okay." After I'd called on
him oh at least a half a dozen times, I had to be up
in the Fresno Office, the District Office, and I
asked them there if they had a profile of the
county lines roads in that area. And they said
"sure" and they produced it, and to my amazement
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saw that the county had an easement for road
purposes of something like 60 feet. Now the
paved road in front of his house was just about
half again as wide as this room.
Storey: Which would be say maybe 20 - 25 feet?
Harrison: Yeah, the other half, and I knew that pavement
was just about that size. But here the profile
showed that the county already had an easement
of 60 feet. So I called on my friend, I had my
briefcase with me. We sat on the veranda, we
talked about everything in the world, I never
mentioned "easement." And I said "Mr. W, can
you point out the center line of this road"? He
said "sure." So the two of us got down off the
pavement and he started at one end of the
pavement, went the whole length of the pavement,
and then came back and said "here's the center
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Michael Harrison
line." And I said, "Mr. W, I have some
information for you that you can check if you'll go
into Visalia" which was the county seat "and go to
the County Clerk's office." I says, "the County
has a right-of-way for an easement of 60 feet.
Now all we were going to take from you was one
row of trees and two rows of vines, and pay you
for it. If the County ever wishes to exercise its
right, they're going to take four rows of trees and
eight rows of vines and not pay you a cent
because you have encroached on their property."
"Mr. Harrison, are you telling me . . ." "You want
to go into Visalia with me, my car's right there,
we'll drive right in, and you can see the map
yourself." He says, "Do you have those papers"?
"Mr. W, the last time I was here, you told me that,
finally — so I've turned them over to the lawyers
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up there, but I'm going back this weekend and I'll
try to stop it." I had the damn papers in my
briefcase. I could have taken them out then, he
could've signed them then. So when I came back
the following Monday, he was the first one I
called on as I remember. That was a big success,
he gave a big sigh of relief!
Storey: It's interesting the kinds of things you get into in
these kinds of issues. Very legalistic and very
specialized so that the people you were dealing
with often didn't understand a lot about what was
going on.
Harrison: Well for instance, we had a case in Berryessa
Valley again, where we built the Berryessa Dam.
As I said I think I bought all of the land for that
project, both for the dam and the reservoir. There
was a piece of property there that had passed
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Michael Harrison
through ownership after ownership after
ownership, and finally it came into the ownership
of this particular person and when we got the
preliminary title report, it showed that a previous
owner -— the property had been in the name of a
previous owner and his wife. And when he died
the estate was not probated, and she sold the
property to the present owner -- when the
husband's name had not been removed from the
title. Which meant that the present owner had to
bring a quiet title suit to clear the title so we could
pay him; because we would not pay until every
cloud had been removed, and it was up to the
owner to remove the clouds.
Now another instance that I ran into on several
occasions was the preliminary title report which
showed that there was an outstanding note of X
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number of thousands of dollars. Now invariably,
when I negotiated a deed, [I was asked] "when am I
going to get my money"? Well I would have a pretty
good idea from what the preliminary title report
showed as to whether it was a clear title, and I always
had a copy of it. And if it was a clear title I'd say well
it'd just be a matter of weeks until they could put the
thing through the mill but if there's a cloud on the
title, that cloud has to be removed. So when the
owner would say "when am I going to get paid," I'd
have to point out that the preliminary title report
showed that there was an outstanding note of X
number of thousands of dollars. Well, he'd explode,
"well hell I paid that off X number of years ago, I've
got a stack of canceled checks." "Yeah but you never
had that note after you paid it off or mortgage you
never had it recorded. Now you've got to get down to
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Michael Harrison
the county court house and record it and once it's
recorded, it'll be cleared from your title and you'll get
your money." Ran into that as I say several times, so
you had to sort of be what we used to call in the army
a "guard house lawyer," you had to know a little
something about the law.
Storey: So what kinds of things did you acquire property
for? You've mentioned canals, you've mentioned
for dams I believe at Shasta and Trinity.
Anything else?
Harrison: Flooding easements, I came into the Bureau of
Reclamation long after Folsom Dam was built
and yet I acquired flooding easements for Folsom.
Storey: Below Folsom?
Harrison: Below Folsom, yeah, and above.
Storey: And we would pay for an easement of that sort?
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Harrison: Oh, yeah, oh and I also acquired easements for the
high powerlines that came down from Shasta.
Storey: For the transmission lines.
Harrison: For the transmissions lines, sure.
Storey: Uh huh, and we would pay for that?
Harrison: Oh yeah.
Storey: A one-time charge? A one-time payment?
Harrison: Yeah, I know for some of those flooding
easements we paid 80 percent of the fee value of
the property.
Storey: And why is that? Why is that notable maybe I
should say.
Harrison: Well because if the land was worth $100 an acre,
we paid $80 an acre for it, and maybe it might
never be flooded.
Storey: Mmm-hmm, but we have the right to flood it.
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Michael Harrison
Harrison: But we have the right to flood it, which would
then prevent any suits being brought against the
Government.
Storey: Uh huh, and who decided what lands we needed
to acquire?
Harrison: Well that was all done in the engineering
department, I guess.
Storey: So somebody would come into the lands — was
this a branch or a division or whatever, do you
remember? A section?
Harrison: A section I guess, wouldn't the Bureau divide it
into sections, engineering, land, legal, and so on?
Storey: Probably divisions but I, you know without
looking, I can't . . .
Harrison: You see, I've been out of the Federal Government
now since 1960, and you new guys have come up
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with all sorts of crazy ideas like planners who
make it miserable for the guys in the field.
Storey: But somebody would come in and say to the
Lands people we need to acquire a flood easement
for this property and then the appraiser would
start up work. . .
Harrison But they would also present us with the
engineering data: the plats, descriptions of the
land they needed, and the map, everything. Then
the papers for the acquisition would be prepared
in our department, Land Division, and then the
appraiser would go out and appraise the property.
He would come back and take photographs and do
the things necessary to make an appraisal, like
within the radius of 5 miles of the take, find
comparable sales and so on, check the County
records, check with the title company records to
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Michael Harrison
gain all the information that he needed to make a
proper appraisal. If what we acquire here is the
same type of property, same conditions prevail,
everything is here that these prices must be
comparable and so on. And then that appraisal
report together with the photographs and all of the
data and the maps and everything is then turned
over to the right-of-way agent and he studies that
appraisal report. Then he goes out and looks at
the property and then goes talks to the owner.
Storey: And acquires it. Can we take a little break now?
Harrison: What's the matter, have I worn you out? [Pause in
tape]. One more efficiency rating, this is the last
one that I got. "Michael Harrison is ending a long
career of devoted and efficient service to the
Department of the Interior. His performance on
his job has been very good in all elements and
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perhaps deserves the Excellent Summary Rating,
were it not for the administrative requirement to
restrict the number of such ratings."
Storey: Yes, that's a continuing problem at the Bureau of
Reclamation. You know they have the Denver
Office which is supposed to be a group of highly
skilled professionals but they want to give quotas
on who can get good ratings and all that kind of
thing. You want to take a break now for lunch, is
that right?
Harrison: Well, let's go on till — we still have about 10
minutes.
Storey: Okay. I'm interested in talking about different
areas of where you worked, for instance
Berryessa, did you work only on the Central
Valley Project? Or did you work on all of the
Projects in this region?
69
Michael Harrison
Harrison: Well, all of the Projects in this region I
understood was considered the Central Valley
Project.
Storey: Well for instance there's Truckee-Carson, which
is . . .
Harrison: No, no, no. Berryessa, Folsom, Shasta, Friant, the
dam at Friant, Friant-Kern Canal, and the
transmission lines, Cachuma, Santa Barbara.
Those are the ones.
Storey: Okay, yeah, I'd like to talk about them more. For
instance, I think at Berryessa, I believe I'm correct
in thinking there was a small community that was
flooded out by the waters.
Harrison: Winters was the little village.
Storey: Yeah. And I'd like to talk about whether
communities like that presented special problems
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to a right-of-way agent that weren't presented by
rural lands, for instance, and those kinds of things.
Harrison: Not that I recall. I found that wherever I worked
the people as a general rule were pretty much the
same. My reaction was that people were people
and if you treated them in a decent manner, they
reciprocated. They treated you the same way. I
never — I think one of the reasons was I never
went, in the first place, as I told you whenever I
was in the field, I dressed just the way those
people were dressed. Well of course when I had
to go to San Francisco, I wore a blue jacket and
gray slacks but out in the field I wore high-top
boots, I wore khaki pants, I wore a wool shirt, and
a Levi jumper probably. So they felt that they
were talking to a peer, to an equal, and I found no
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Michael Harrison
difference in working with people in the northern
part of the State or south of here.
Storey: Did you have any problems about, let's see how
should I put this, becoming swept up in the
emotional aspect of people losing property, that
had been their home for a long time or anything
like that? Did you run into that?
Harrison: Not too much, however, I do remember one
instance on the Trinity Project, where an elderly
couple, oh goodness they must have been in their
late 70's, lived on a mining claim in the — I don't
like to say a shack, it was maybe a step or two
above what we consider a shack. There was no
value there at all, either in the land on which they
were or the home in which they lived, so that the
appraised value was as I recall just a couple of
thousand dollars. And what in the hell was an
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elderly couple going to do with a couple of
thousand dollars when they had to give that up?
That is one instance where I was bothered, but
neither the appraiser nor I nor anyone else could
do anything about it. We had to have that land.
Storey: But you didn't run across this too often.
Harrison: No.
Storey: What about like in Winters, this community under
Berryessa. Was there a lot of sort of sentiment
about the town and that [kind] of thing?
Harrison: Not that I recall. I don't know because I didn't
have anything to do with the people in town.
Now if you could find anybody that worked for
Barney Bellport who was the engineer in charge
then, who worked — and he had his office right
there in Winters, if you could talk to anybody out
of that office, they certainly should be in a
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Michael Harrison
position to tell you what the attitudes of the local
folk were to the Bureau of Reclamation.
Storey: Well, who acquired that town then?
Harrison: No, the town is still there and it's grown, it's
flourished.
Storey: Oh, well, I'm thinking of a community that I
believe was flooded.
Harrison: They would have floods occasionally when Putah
Creek ran.
Storey: No, I mean flooded by the dam, by the reservoir
behind it.
Harrison: Oh, that was Berryessa Valley, I didn't . . . I
thought you were talking about the town of
Winters. Well, there wasn't a town in the
Berryessa Valley: there were scattered ranch
houses, there was a post office, and a grocery
store and with it was a filling station, and the
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Bureau of Reclamation Oral History Program
people who owned, the Postmaster, oh I've
forgotten their names, but they picked up and
relocated in Fairfield. But they had a general
store, grocery store, filling station, and a post
office. They didn't like the idea, I know they
didn't . . . as a matter of fact, the Postmaster told
me that "when that goddam dam was built, all
this'll be'll be a mud flat." Well as I recall the first
year, there were 80 foot of water where the post
office was.
Storey: Were there any other little communities like that
that you purchased during your years with
Reclamation that you remember?
Harrison: No.
Storey: Okay, well, why don't we take a break now and
then come back and talk a little later about some
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Michael Harrison
of the other areas where you worked besides
Berryessa and Ivanhoe? [pause in tape].
Storey: Well we're resuming the interview at about 1:15
on November 18 again. I was wondering if you
could tell me about some of the other areas where
you worked besides Trinity and Berryessa, for
instance.
Harrison: Well I worked on Whiskeytown, Folsom,
Cachuma, and the transmission lines.
Storey: Typically, when you went to work on these would
you be the only person for the Project or would
you be working in coordination with others, or
how did that work?
Harrison: Well, all the right-of-way agents worked
independently of each other. Nobody — I never
called on anyone to help me in the negotiation --
I never called anyone, they never called me to
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help with negotiation. We worked independently
of each other.
Storey: How many right-of-way people were there?
Harrison: I think at the most there weren't more than four or
five of us working at one time.
Storey: And for whom did you work?
Harrison: First for John Smithwick, and when he retired for
Jim Stewart. But they were both under the
Regional Land Officer, Joe Leach.
Storey: And Joe Leach was there the entire time you were
there?
Harrison: Yes, yes.
Storey: Who were the Regional Directors that were there
while you there?
Harrison: Pardon my ignorance, but I don't recall the name
of any of them.
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Michael Harrison
Storey: Oh, okay. Do you remember any of them —
anything that they did or anything?
Harrison: No I don't . . . I believe I served under at least
three.
Storey: And you traveled a lot.
Harrison: Constantly.
Storey: Did they provide you with a Government car or a
Government truck or something?
Harrison: Sir, we didn't drive trucks, we drove sedans.
Four-door sedans, and my preference was always
for the Chevy's, rather than the Fords.
Storey: Uh huh, and how often did they change the cars?
Harrison: Never! The car was assigned to you and it was up
to you to see that it was properly gassed and oiled
and repaired and so on.
Storey: And so you came in '47, wasn't it? (Harrison:
'47.) You drove the same car until you retired?
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Bureau of Reclamation Oral History Program
Harrison: Just about. No, I had different Chevy's.
Storey: And there was a car pool here in Sacramento that
assigned those.
Harrison: Yes, there was.
Storey: Did you bring the car back for servicing there?
Harrison: Well if we were in the field and it needed
servicing, it was done in the field, but most often
when we'd bring it home and put it into the pool,
it was taken care of then.
Storey: Okay, and you mentioned earlier that you came
back about every other weekend, and that was it.
So this was a LOT of travel.
Harrison: Oh yes.
Storey: How was per diem handled in those days?
Harrison: Well at the end of the month you made out a
voucher, travel voucher, and you were paid your
per diem that way, you got a check for it.
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Michael Harrison
Storey: Seems like this was as much travel as you did
with the Indian Bureau.
Harrison: Yes, only with the Indian Bureau I'd be in the
field longer than 2 weeks and every other
weekend. As a matter of fact, for instance,
between 1936 and 1939, I spent 22 months in
Washington on a special detail for the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs.
Storey: What were you doing on that special detail?
Harrison: I had uncovered some information on the Hoepa
Reservation that I transmitted to the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs and in the
publication of that information in "Indians at
Work" which was the in-house organ of the Indian
Bureau, he was sued for $250,000 libel by an ex-
Congregational minister by the name of Collett
and it was on the reason for that libel suit that I
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Bureau of Reclamation Oral History Program
was called back to Washington to assist the three
attorneys who were defending the libel suit
against the Commissioner. It resulted in one of
the three attorneys and I taking 125 depositions in
California, for instance, which meant spending
months back in Washington, then coming to
California traveling . . .
END OF SIDE 1, TAPE 2BEGINNING OF SIDE 2, TAPE 2
Storey: . . . for Reclamation, did you ever have to work
down in the Delta area? Was there anything
going on down there from the CVP.
Harrison: Not that I recall.
Storey: But you worked the north end of the valley, you
worked the south end of the valley, (Harrison:
Yes.) so you weren't assigned a specific area to
work in. (Harrison: No. No.) They would just
81
Michael Harrison
send you wherever they happened to need you at
the moment?
Harrison: That's right. As a matter of fact in one instance
for a right-of-way for which we had to have a
deed, the owner of the property lived up in
Canada and I suggested that I might go up there
but was told that, "We'll handle it by mail," which
I think was a very bad decision.
Storey: Why was that?
Harrison: Hell, I wanted to go to Canada!
Storey: Oh, okay, it was a nice scenic area, huh?
Harrison: Certainly!
Storey: Do you happen to remember what your first salary
with the Federal Government was? After the
Army I mean.
Harrison: $1,320 a year.
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Storey: $1,320 a year. Do you mind my asking what your
salary when you retired was?
Harrison: Close to $8,000.
Storey: About 8, they do change — times do change.
When you got the three[two]-grade increase, and
moved over to Reclamation, do you remember
what your starting salary at Reclamation was?
Harrison: (Drumming fingers on desk.) I think it was close
to $4,000. I'm guessing.
Storey: Yeah, okay. The um . . .
Harrison: Thank God for COLAS!
Storey: Cost of living allowances? Yeah, they keep you
competitive, I guess. Well, can you think of
anything I should have asked you?
Harrison: Yeah, you should have asked me what I had for
dinner last night. You just about asked me
everything else!
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Michael Harrison
Storey: No, no. How about the Retirees Organization
here in town, do you know any of the people who
are active in that?
Harrison: I know several retirees but I don't know who is
active in it.
Storey: Okay, yeah the office downtown can help me.
Harrison: They should have that information. I know the
person from whom I get an announcement every
year for their annual get-together of the retirees
from the Bureau is a Miss Rinehart but I can't give
you her address or telephone number. You can
get that from the local office.
Storey: Sure, sure, okay. What have you done since you
retired?
Harrison: Busier now than I ever was.
Storey: Uh huh. In what way?
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Bureau of Reclamation Oral History Program
Harrison: Well I — 70 some odd years ago I started
collecting material, literature, on the history and
development of the Trans-Mississippi West, plus
Indian arts and crafts and non-Indian art of the
West. And over the years, I've made
contributions to the Laboratory of Anthropology
in Santa Fe: for instance I gave them a collection
of Southwest baskets, 126 baskets, as a gift, plus
other Indian crafts and materials, and to the
Southwest Museum in southern California I have
gifted Navajo textiles, photographs that were
taken by people like Timothy O'Sullivan, and
photographs that I had taken of Indians both in the
Southwest and California, plus my Navajo silver
collection of over 200 pieces, plus 22 oil
paintings, water colors, and etchings of the
Southwest by people like Joseph H. Sharp, Louis
85
Michael Harrison
Sharp, Frank Sauerwein, Lon McGargee, and
others, and although I've stopped collecting things
like Navajo jewelry, I still collect books on the
Trans-Mississippi West and paintings and things
of that sort. Eventually, all of it will go to the
University of California at Davis as part of the
Margaret B. Harrison and Michael Harrison
Western Research Center. As of now, it is an
adjunct library of the university.
Storey: Well, let me ask you if the tapes and transcripts
from this interview can be used by Reclamation
researchers and non-Reclamation researchers
interested in Reclamation history.
Harrison: Certainly.
Storey: Good. I appreciate it. Thank you.
END OF SIDE 2, TAPE 2.
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Bureau of Reclamation Oral History Program
INDEX
Act of 1889Canal rights-of-way did not require compensation@
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39Reclamation debates whether to pay for improvements on
ROWJ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41Reserves right-of-way for canals to Federal government
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . F39Act of 1890
Amended to provide compensation beginning in 1961A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
See Act of 1889 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39Agent Boy
Nickname for Michael Harrison+ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18Berryessa Dam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36, 60Berryessa Valley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36, 60Calpella Pete . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18Canal Act of 1890 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39Collett
Minister sues Indian Bureau' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79Collier, John . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Flooding easements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63Folsom Dam
Flooding easements! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63Friant-Kern Canal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47Ginsberg, Allen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Graves, Charley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 22
Assistant Regional Director, Indian Bureau, Portland,OregonP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Harrison, Margaret B. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85Harrison, Michael
"Agent Boy" -- nickname for Michael HarrisonB . . . 18
87
Michael Harrison
Amount of travel while working for ReclamationD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
As right-of-way agent had no right to negotiate priceK. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Birth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Collector of Western Americana and art< . . . . . . . . . 84Collects books on the Trans-Mississippi WestB . . . . 85Dealing with landowners who didn't want to sell or were
upsetS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31Dealing with people who felt their property more
valuableO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36Developed plat book for Indian lands: . . . . . . . . . . . . 23Donations of art, handicrafts, and printed materialI
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84Dress in the field( . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35Enters government service in 1918-1919< . . . . . . . . . 2Example of gold on the land that had no appraised
valueM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50Example of landowner who felt Reclamation's valuation
too lowS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51Example of negotiations over price with landownerG
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47Examples of appraisals that were too low> . . . . . . . . 28Field aide in the Indian Service6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9Head of the Land Division, Sacramento Indian AgencyI
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10Hours as an Indian agent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6How dealth with landowners0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44In charge of lands in the Sacramento Indian AgencyH
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10In Lands Division of Indian Bureau 1935-47@ . . . . 23Inventory of Indian Bureau lands6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18Joins army at age 21* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2Joins Indian Service* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
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Bureau of Reclamation Oral History Program
Joins National Park Service1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Moves to the Bureau of Reclamation8 . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Non-involvement of right-of-way agents in
condemnationL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38Post-retirement activities0 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83Responsibilities as a field aide in the Indian BureauK
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11Retires from government service in 1960= . . . . . . . . . 8Rights-of-way agent for Bureau of ReclamationC . . 25Salary range in Federal service5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81Severance damage& . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47Stationed at Grand Canyon with the National Park
ServiceN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Way in which right-of-way agent did businessB . . . . 27Works for Erie Railroad- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2Works for Public Service Corporation of New JerseyH
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2Indian allotments
Shasta Dam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Indian Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Inventory if Indian Bureau lands
% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18Ivanhoe Irrigation District
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55Leach, Joe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25, 76
Chief Land Officer, Bureau of Reclamation region? . . 5Margaret B. and Michael Harrison Western Research Center
= . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85McGargee, Lon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85Mulcahey, Mary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25Nash, Roy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 21
Superintendent, Sacramento Indian Agency6 . . . . . . . 3National Park Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Navajo jewelry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
89
Michael Harrison
O'Sullivan, Timothy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84Paterson, New Jersey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Payments for trees, vines, crops
% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55Powerline easements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64Public Domain allotment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Putah Creek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73Right-of-way acquisition
Difference between Bureau of Reclamation and State ofCalifornia] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Right-of-way agentDifference from an appraiser3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Right-of-way agentsWorked independently of one another; . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Sacramento Indian Agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Santa Fe, New Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Sauerwein, Frank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85Severance damage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47Sharp, Joseph H. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84Sharp, Louis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85Shasta Dam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Powerline easements" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64Smithwick, John . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16, 25, 76
Bureau of Reclamation employee2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Stewart, Jim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25, 76Ukiah, California . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18University of California at Davis
& . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85Visalia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59Winnebago allotments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19Winters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69Woehlke, Walter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Associate Commissioner of Indian Affairs< . . . . . . . . 7
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Bureau of Reclamation Oral History Program
Tries to convince Harrison to stay with Indian BureauI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
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Michael Harrison
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Bureau of Reclamation Oral History Program
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM GUIDELINES:BUREAU OF RECLAMATION
Effective Date: October 13, 1994
COOPERATIVE PROGRAM WITH THENATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS
ADMINISTRATION (NARA)
The Bureau of Reclamation conducts its oral historyprogram cooperatively with NARA because Reclamationwishes to permanently protect the data obtained throughimplementation of its oral history program, facilitate researchin Reclamation's history, and assure permanent access ofReclamation and researchers to the data resulting fromimplementation of its oral history program. This cooperativeprogram permits Reclamation to: use and distributeunrestricted oral history materials; use and distributerestricted oral history materials after the restrictions end; and,close interviews to public access and researcher accessthrough restrictions contained in a donor's deed of giftaccepted by the Archivist of the United States. The programis governed by a Memorandum of Understanding between theBureau of Reclamation and the National Archives andRecords Administration. These Oral History ProgramGuidelines of the Bureau of Reclamation fulfill one conditionof that agreement and are required to be followed.
OBJECTIVES OF THE ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM
The ideal sought in Bureau of Reclamation oral historytranscripts is to retain information understood today which
93
Michael Harrison
may not be clearly understood, or will be lost entirely, inthe future; yet, still retain facts and opinions, speechpatterns, inflections, characteristics, and flavor of speech. This shall be done through preservation of oral historyinterviews: on cassette tapes and in printed transcriptions.
ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEWS DONE OUTSIDETHE DENVER OFFICE
Oral history interviews done outside the DenverOffice should conform to the guidance in this document toassure that the resulting tapes and transcripts will beaccepted by the National Archives and RecordsAdministration for permanent storage and retention. Evenif that is not done, copies of tapes and transcripts should beprovided to the Oral History program in the Denver Office.
CONDUCT OF INTERVIEWS
Preparation for Interviews
Effective interviews are dependent upon properpreparation in advance. A brief telephone conversationwith the prospective interviewee should provide basicbackground about where the interviewee worked atReclamation and types of responsibility. Using thatinformation, basic research into the offices involved andrelevant projects may be conducted.
It is always a good idea to have a list of questionsready in advance of the interview. These should containboth general and specific questions about Reclamation and
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Bureau of Reclamation Oral History Program
the interviewee's special areas of expertise andresponsibility.
Obtaining Deed of Gift
Signature of the interviewee on the approved deedof gift should be obtained before the interview--with theunderstanding that clauses limiting access to all or part ofthe interview may be added after the interview if theinterviewee deems it necessary.
The interviewer will also sign the deed of gift as asimple acknowledgement of conduct of the interview.
Objective of the Interview
ALWAYS REMEMBER THAT, WHILE WE ALSOWANT GENERAL BACKGROUND ABOUT THEPERSON BEING INTERVIEWED, THE OBJECTIVE(S)OF THE INTERVIEW IS:
TO PRESERVE INFORMATION ABOUT THEBUREAU OF RECLAMATION, ITS PROJECTS,THE COMMUNITIES ON ITS PROJECTS, ANDPERCEPTIONS OF BOTH INSIDERS ANDOUTSIDERS ABOUT THE BUREAU OFRECLAMATION.
Conduct of the Interview(Including Opening and Closing Statements on Tape)
Introducing the Interview
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Before Taping Begins
Before beginning the interview discuss:
the general nature of what is going tohappen,
the deed of gift and request signature of it,
point out that the interviewee may at anytime state that they don't wish to discuss thetopic proposed,
state that in addition to information strictlyabout the Bureau of Reclamation you wantgeneral family, education, biographicaloutline and other information about theinterviewee,
Explain that the interview will betranscribed and then transmitted to theinterviewee for review for accuracy andcorrect spellings. The interviewee will thenbe asked to initial each page of theinterview.
Beginning the Interview on Tape
Open the interview with a statement which includesthe following information:
Names of interviewer and interviewee.Any pertinent information such as: farmer
on _______ Project, or, electrician at
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Hoover Dam, or, operator atMinidoka Dam, or, watermaster ofthe Northern Colorado WaterConservancy District, etc..
LocationDateTimePoint out to the interviewee that the
conversation is being recorded andask permission to record theconversation.
Conduct of the Interview on Tape
Try to avoid questions which can be answered withyes and no. Instead ask for descriptions, explanations ofevents or working conditions or relationships with thecommunity, etc.
Responses that include hand motions needsupplemental work by the interviewer. When a person says"Oh, it was about this high" [and holds a hand about 2½feet above the floor] -- we have no record of the meaning ofwhat was said. The interviewer must integrate words intothe tape to provide the necessary meaning, e.g., "Oh, about2½ feet high, then?"
Just Before Ending the Interview
Before closing an interview, ask the intervieweewhether (s)he wishes to add anything, recount aninteresting story, or express any perspectives onReclamation that were not already covered.
Ending the Interview
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5. Much of this material is developed from Shirley E. Stephenson,Editing and Indexing: Guidelines for Oral History (Fullerton:California State University, 1978 (Second Printing with revisions -1983).
Michael Harrison
In spite of the signed deed of gift, each interviewshould end with a question such as this:
May we quote from and otherwise use theinformation in this interview for purposes ofresearch and quotation? And may we also provide itto researchers interested in Reclamation and itshistory for purposes of research and quotation?
The end of the interview should be a briefrestatement, ON TAPE, as to the identity of interviewerand interviewee, time, date, and location.
PREPARATION OF TRANSCRIPTS5
Use of Computers
For editorial and other reasons it is necessary to usean IBM compatible computer using WordPerfect 5.1 or alater version for transcription of Bureau of Reclamationoral history interviews.
Objectives
Transcription and editing of oral history interviewsby the Bureau of Reclamation shall be carried out inaccordance with this guidance.
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Transcription shall be done only with very limitedediting. The basic objective is a verbatim transcript of theinterview.
The Parts of the Final Transcript
The following will normally be the outline of acompleted transcript, and when transmitted to theinterviewee for review the transcript will be as nearlycomplete as possible:
Ë Title Page with suggested bibliographic citationform on the back of the page near the bottom. Thetitle page should include the information and be laidout as shown in Appendix 1.
Ë Table of Contents -- use the table of contentsfunction of WordPerfect to do this.
Ë An "Introduction" to the transcript with backgroundmaterial on the interviewee and interview, andincluding:
Discussion of the time, location, date, andcircumstances of the interview.
Listing of each Bureau of Reclamationemployee or contractor involved in theinterviewing, transcribing, editing, andindexing of the interview.
Ë Copy of the signed and dated "Statement ofDonation" for the interview.
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Ë The transcript of the interview.
Ë Appendices, including:! A copy of the Bureau of Reclamation's "oral
history program guidelines". ! A list of donated photographs (including
copies made at Reclamation expensewhich were only loaned) and/ordocuments -- if any provided by theinterviewee/donor.
! Copies of any photographs and/ordocuments.
Ë Index to the transcript -- use the indexing functionof WordPerfect to do this.
Page Layout of Transcripts
Begin the first page of the transcript with theheading "Oral History Interview of_____________________________."
Single space the heading on the first page. Doublespace the transcript itself.
Insert a centered footer which will include the pagenumber to begin after the first page of the transcript in thisformat (8 pt. Times Roman font):
Name of IntervieweeBureau of Reclamation Oral History Program
Date of InterviewPage Ctrl-B
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The transcript, if it falls naturally into distinctsegments may have headings for each segment inserted inthe transcript.
To indicate the speaker use the last name of theperson followed by a colon on the left margin of the page,e.g.:
Wilson: Would you tell me about youreducational experience?
Smythesville: I was educated, first, at a one- roomschool house in Wittsendburg, . . .
After the name of the speaker indent as needed toline up the left edge of the text for all speakers. Forinstance do not do the following:
Babb: Would you tell me about your educationalexperience?
Smythesville: I was educated, first, at a one- roomschool house in Wittsendburg, . . .
Instead, indent twice after Babb and once afterSmythesville for this effect:
Babb: Would you tell me about youreducational experience?
Smythesville: I was educated, first, at a one- roomschool house in Wittsendburg, . . .
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Indicating paragraphs in transcripts should follow thefollowing rules:
Immediately after the name of the speaker do not tabat the beginning of the paragraph. For allsubsequent paragraphs tab the beginning of theparagraph and do not insert extra spaces. Forinstance:
Witt: Well, I went to grade school at South
Wittburg, junior high school at West
Wittburg, and High School at South
Inglewood.
On the other hand, my older
sister went to grade school at South
Wittburg, and then attended West
Wittburg Junior High School before
going off to finishing school in
Basel, Switzerland.
Then I went to college at . . .
Indicating the Beginning and end of Tapes
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Indicate the beginning and end of each side of tapesin the transcript. Place this notation on the left marginlined up with names. Do not indicate the beginning of thefirst tape -- simply begin the transcript. For instance (notesingle spacing):
END OF SIDE 1, TAPE 1.BEGINNING OF SIDE 2, TAPE 1.
Smith: There was no indication that we . . .
If interviews/sessions on more than one date occurred thenuse the following format:
END OF SIDE 2, TAPE 2. SEPTEMBER 15, 1993.BEGINNING OF SIDE 1, TAPE 1. OCTOBER 22,1993.
Smith: There was no indication that we . . .
In such cases, place that date at the end of all indications oftape changes in order to help quickly orientreaders/researchers:
END OF SIDE 2, TAPE 1. SEPTEMBER 15, 1993.BEGINNING OF SIDE 1, TAPE 2. SEPTEMBER15, 1993.
Smith: There was no indication that we . . .
Editorial Conventions
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Transcription shall be done only with very limitedediting -- punctuation designed to clarify meaning must beprovided; only false starts and redundant oral sounds shallbe edited out of the transcript with no indication they havebeen removed; interruptions to the interview or situationswhen the conversation wanders from the topic may beindicated in brackets and not included; to the extentpossible full identification of individuals and geographicplace names shall be provided.
Punctuation Conventions
Punctuation is the best tool for the transcriber andeditor to provide clarity, understandability, and readability. Do not rearrange sentences or words to do this. Punctuation must simply reflect the original meaning andthe original arrangement of thoughts.
Quotation marks.
Do not use quotes around the words of theinterviewee as spoken to the interviewer. Usequotes around words which are presented by theinterviewee as quotes of another person, e.g., -- thenhe said to me "Well, if you want it that way you cango ahead and do it."
Place commas and periods inside quotation marks --regardless of whether the punctuation belongs to thequotation or the sentence as a whole.
Place colons and semicolons outside quotationmarks.
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Question marks and exclamation marks are placedinside or outside the quotation marks dependentupon whether or not they belong to the quotation orto the sentence as a whole.
PARENTHESES ARE USED TO INDICATE THINGSWHICH ARE ON THE TAPE. When laughter or otherexpressive sounds occur indicate them in parentheses =( ). Indicate only what is on the tape with parentheses =( ).
ALSO USE PARENTHESES to include brief interjectionsin a discussion. For instance:
Smith: At that time we were assigned to specialduty as concrete inspectors for theconstruction of the dam. We found that thequantity of ice mixed with the concrete wasinsufficient to reduce the temperatureproperly, (Jones: Yes.) and we had to workthat issue out with the contractor. That onlytook a day, but it was rather tense becausethe contractor had to shut down the[concrete] batch plant while we worked itout. (Jones: Um-hmm.). The contractorwas particularly concerned that she wouldn'tfall behind schedule, and . . .
BRACKETS ARE USED TO INDICATESUPPLEMENTAL EDITORIAL INFORMATION SUCHAS INTERPOLATIONS, EXPLANATIONS, ANDCORRECTIONS PROVIDED BY THE EDITOR WHICHWAS NOT ON THE ORIGINAL TAPE -- place it inbrackets =[ ]
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FOOTNOTES:
May be used to provide supplemental editorialinformation. This would generally be done forresearched information added to clarify andsupplement the interview while brackets wouldprovide brief information intended to clarify whatwas said.
Footnotes must be attributed to indicate who addedthe material. If the editor made the addition, thefootnote should be followed by: (Ed.) If theaddition was made by the interviewee, the footnoteshould be followed by the initials of the intervieweein parentheses.
Footnotes should be printed at the bottom of thepage on which they appear in the final transcriptrather than at the end of the entire transcript or of asection of it. The following conventions should beused (using WordPerfect set these conventions inthe options to footnotes at the beginning of thetranscript):
The footnote number in the text shall besuperscript.The footnote(s) shall be separated from the
text on the page with a line frommargin to margin of the page.
The footnote number in the footnote shall beon the left margin with the beginningof text one tab in from the note.
The footnote number in the note shall befull-size and shall sit on the same
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6. Technically double dashes (--) are known as "em" dashes andsingle dashes (-) are known as "en" dashes.
Bureau of Reclamation Oral History Program
line as the text, i.e., it will not besuperscript.
Ellipses are used to indicate pauses in the conversation.
For pauses in the middle of sentences always typethem as three dots separated by spaces from oneanother and the preceding word -- thus . . .
For pauses which become the end of sentences oreven incomplete thoughts, always type them as fourdots separated by spaces form one another and thepreceding word -- thus . . . .
Use of dashes.
Double dashes (--)6 are used to show an abruptchange of thought in a sentence. For purposes ofReclamation's transcripts each double dash will bepreceded and followed by a space. For example:
Our house at the dam had a living room,dining room, kitchen, and three bedrooms --now it's been moved over on "N" Street herein town.
Single dashes (-) are used in inclusive or continuingseries of numbers or dates (e.g., 23-26 or 1945-1948; to indicate words spelled out by the
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7. If a typewriter is being used for some reason, a single underlineof the word indicates it is italicized.
8. The official title of the newspaper that appears on the mastheadis what should be italicized. Consult Ayer's Directory of Newspapersand Periodicals for the official title.
9. Dictionaries are useful here. A useful reference is Marjorie E.Skillin, Robert M. Gay, et. al., Words Into Type (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1974).
Michael Harrison
interviewee (e.g., L-A-N-I-D-O); for compoundwords (e.g., twenty-one).
Use of italics:
Use the italics font on the computer to indicateitalics.7
Italics are used:
For titles: books, plays, newspapers8,periodicals, journals, long poems, musicalproductions, paintings, films; the names ofships, trains, and aircraft.
For foreign words not yet anglicized.9
Abbreviations:
Under normal circumstances abbreviations shouldnot be used since one does not speak inabbreviations and the objective is a verbatimtranscript. The following abbreviations are
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generally acceptable: Mr., Messrs., Mrs., Ms., Dr.,Jr., Sr., Ph.D., M.A., B.C., A.D., a.m., and p.m..
Do not use U. S. Postal Service abbreviations fornames of states. Spell them out.
Acronyms:
Acronyms are capitalized without periods insertedafter each letter, e.g., BR, NASA, NPS.
Normally the first use of an acronym should befollowed by the words for which that acronymstands in brackets, e.g., BR [Bureau ofReclamation]; SOP [standard operating procedure].
If an interviewee uses the acronym B-O-R forReclamation, type it BoR [BOR is the acronym forthe Bureau of Outdoor Recreation, a now defunctFederal agency].
Hyphens:
Do not use hyphens except in compound words. Turn the hyphenation default in the computerprogram off.
Margins:
Set the margins in the computer at one inch -- top,bottom, and sides.
Justification:
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Set the justification at left justify only. Do not usethe "full" justification setting.
Grammatical Conventions
Use contractions in the transcript when they appearon the tape, e.g., they's, it's, etc..
Do not correct the interviewee's grammar.
For consistent colloquial pronunciations of wordsuse the proper spelling instead of a phonetic spelling, e.g.,them and not "em." But, equally, do not change the words,e.g., "yeah" is a word and should not be changed to "yes."
Numbers:
Generally exact numbers of two or fewer digitsshould be spelled out and numbers with more thantwo digits should be expressed in numerals.
Dates and parts of a book are expressed in numerals.
Do abbreviate dates when the century was notincluded in the taped discussion (e.g., '41 and not1941)
When referring to dates you may use numerals andan "s" -- type 1940s instead of Nineteen Forties, ortype '40s for the term forties. Do not use anapostrophe unless the term is possessive [as in --The 50's autos often had huge tail fins]..
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Spelling Conventions
Use the first (preferred) spelling in a standarddictionary when transcribing. American Englishconventions are preferred over British English conventionsin most instances (.e.g, interviewing a Briton might resultin use of British English spellings).
Table of Contents
Interviews on different dates and major sections ofthe manuscript shall be marked with the table of contentsfunction of the WordPerfect 5.1 program. Interviews ofdifferent dates shall be labelled at Level 1. Major sectionswithin each interview shall be labelled at Level 2.
Indexing
All proper names, project names, feature names,locations, and major topics of discussion shall be indexedusing the WordPerfect 5.1 indexing function. Items in thetext will be cross-indexed as necessary to assure ease offinding them.
Review of Transcript by Interviewee
After transcription and initial editing, the transcriptwill be forwarded to the interviewee for review, commentif necessary, correction of names and place names, etc. The interviewee will be asked to initial each page of theinterview if it is acceptable as is.
If the interviewee requests changes, additions, ordeletions to the transcript, each request will be considered
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on its merits. The transcript will then be corrected asnecessary and returned for final review and initialling bythe interviewee.
Changes to Transcripts at the Request of Interviewees
Additions to transcripts requested by intervieweeswill be made in footnotes at the appropriate location in thetext with the initials of the interviewee in parentheses at theend of the addition.
Deletions to transcripts at the request ofinterviewees should be made with care and only afterconsultation with and approval by the Senior Historian ofthe Bureau of Reclamation.
Editorial changes to transcripts for the purposes ofmaking the text more formal and grammatical, e.g., morelike a formal written style rather than spoken style, shall bediscussed with and approved by the Senior Historian of theBureau of Reclamation. It is the policy of Reclamation,where possible and appropriate, to retain the flavor andstyle of the spoken interview.
Preparation of Record Copy of Transcriptand Other Materials for Transmittal to NARA
The record copy of the transcript prepared fortransmittal to the National Archives and RecordsAdministration will be on quality, non-acid paper with ahigh cotton content, preferably 100 percent cotton. Therecord copy will be unbound, but Reclamation's copies willgenerally be bound in a standardized hard cover format.
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Transcripts of 100 pages, or fewer, will be printedon one side of the paper. Transcripts of more than 100pages will be printed on both sides of the paper.
The record copy of the transcript and other copiesshall normally be printed in Times Roman font at the 12point size.
SUGGESTED INTERVIEW CITATION FORM FORRESEARCHERS
A suggested bibliographic citation should be placednear the bottom of the page on the back of the title page ofeach oral history interview. The following is the formatand punctuation for the citation:
Suggested Bibliographic Citation:
Last name, First and middle name or initial(of interviewee). ORAL HISTORYINTERVIEW. Transcript of tape-recorded Bureau of ReclamationOral History Interview conducted by___(name of interviewer)____,____(relationship of interviewer toReclamation)____, ___(date ofinterview - be precise)___, at___(location of interview). Transcription by ___(name oftranscriber or transcriptionservice)___. Edited by ___(name ofeditor[s])___. Repository for therecord copy of the interview
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transcript is the National Archivesand Records Administration inCollege Park, Maryland.
THIS SET OF GUIDELINES SHALL BE PLACED ATTHE END OR BEGINNING OF EACH INTERVIEWTO PROVIDE INFORMATION ON THEPRINCIPLES USED IN DEVELOPMENT OF THETRANSCRIPT.
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ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEWName of Interviewee
Name of Reclamation Project(if limited to only one - otherwise
blank)
Date of InterviewLocation of Interview
Ë Ë Ë Ë Ë Ë Ë
Interview Conducted by:NameTitle
Organizational Unit
Ë Ë Ë Ë Ë Ë Ë
Oral History ProgramBureau of Reclamation